A selection of runaway slave advertisements from The American Anti-Slavery Almanac, 1838.

A selection of runaway slave advertisements from The American Anti-Slavery Almanac, 1838.

At least two of the runaway slave advertisements specifically note the light complexions of the enslaved men who allegedly ran away. Harriet Jacobs wrote about how common it was in the South to see enslaved people with fair skin tones, an indication that they were born as a result of a sexual encounter between white slaveholding men and enslaved women.